A Differential Fault Attack on Security Vehicle System Applied SIMON Block Cipher

Abstract

With the application of new technologies in vehicles such as wireless communications, microelectronics, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Autonomous Vehicles (AV), there are lots of embedded hardware and software in vehicles, and so cryptographic technologies such as block ciphers are also applied to the vehicle system to protect its security and privacy. In order to better find potential security vulnerabilities and improve security of the vehicle system which applied SIMON block cipher, in this paper, a novel Differential fault attack (DFA) method is presented. By inducing a random bit fault in <formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex>$L^{T-4}$</tex> </formula> (the fourth round from the last), we first demonstrate the process of identifying the fault-induced position. Then, on the basis of the determined position, we describe how to retrieve three rounds of keys by inducing only one round of faults. For retrieving the SIMON family, compared with previous DFAs under the random bit fault model, the lowest numbers of fault-induced and fault locations (or rounds) are required by our attack. In particular, when the key words m is 2 or 3, the proposed attack only needs to induce one round of faults. Finally, we carry out simulation verification and a comparison to illustrate the correctness and effectiveness of the proposed attack.